The Grapple

“I didn’t think we had,” Flora said. If uranium bombs worked the way the people with slide rules thought they would, the postwar world would have two kinds of country in it: the ones with those bombs, which would be powers, and the rest, which…wouldn’t. “That reminds me-any new word about how the Confederates are doing?”

“Nope. I wish there were, but there isn’t,” Franklin Roosevelt said. “Their number one man in this area hasn’t gone anywhere. He’s still right where he was before the war.”

“But they’re still working on it?”

“Well, we sure think so. They know we are-we found that out. They wouldn’t just ignore it themselves.”

“No, they wouldn’t. I wish they would, but no,” Flora said unhappily. “Are they working on it there, then?”

The Assistant Secretary of War paused again. “Don’t know,” he said at last. “We haven’t been able to prove it, not even close, but… Maybe some people ought to pay a call on them there if they really are. It’s a backwater place, not a lot of targets, so nobody’s gone after it much. Not a lot of obvious targets, I should say. We can probably spare some perso

“Yes.” Flora wondered what her question would end up doing to a backwater place somewhere in the CSA. Some people who’d passed a quiet war would suddenly discover that hell had decided to picnic on their front lawn. She shrugged. If that helped keep Joshua safe, she didn’t care.

Cinci

But Georgia-Georgia was something else. It was a sign that the United States were really getting somewhere in this war. And it was a scary place for a Negro in the service of the USA to be.

“Ofays here ain’t go

“I guess I can see that,” Hal Williamson said. “White folks around here don’t like you one whole hell of a lot, do they?”

“White folks around here don’t like anything that’s got anything to do with the USA,” Bruce Donovan said. Before Cinci

“Yeah-ours or their own,” Williamson said.

That made Cinci

Williamson lit a Duke, then held out the pack to Cinci

“Do Jesus!” Cinci

They were ragged and filthy and ski

Donovan tossed his ration can into a dark corner of the room. The clank it made alarmed all the drivers. You never could tell who was lurking in the dark. Maybe it was a Negro, looking for a new lease on life from the U.S. invaders. Or maybe it was a sniper, a bypassed soldier in butternut or a civilian with a hunting rifle and a grudge against damnyankees.

“What the hell?” To Cinci

“It’s just us. Sorry,” Donovan said, also in tones that could only have been forged north of the Mason-Dixon line.

“Well, watch it. Get your dumb ass shot off if you do shit like that very much.” For all the soldier knew, he was cussing out a general. He didn’t care.

Donovan sighed. He knew he’d been careless, too. He needed a couple of minutes to get back to the subject at hand. When he did speak again, it was much more quietly: “Some of the colored gals who come in, they’re damn good-looking.”

“How come you’re so surprised?” Cinci

“He musta figured they’d look like you,” Hal Williamson said dryly, which deflated him and set them all laughing.

How many Negro women had Bruce Donovan seen in person before he started driving a truck through the Confederate States? Any? Cinci

Then Donovan and Williamson shared a glance that excluded Cinci

When you had to order something more than once, it was a sign people weren’t listening to you. Soldiers would screw if they got the chance. Who wouldn’t? And Confederate blacks were more likely to carry the clap and syphilis than whites. Who would have bothered treating them, back in the days before the war? Even up in Covington, Cinci

“What the hell are we going to do with this country once we get done stomping it flat?” Williamson asked, as if his fellow drivers had an answer that eluded the President of the United States and the Congress in Philadelphia. “Everybody white who stays alive’ll hate our guts. All that means is another war as soon as these assholes get back on their feet.”

“Sure worked that way last time around,” Cinci

“Anybody sticks his head up and causes trouble, we got to kill him. Simple as that.” Donovan made it sound simple, anyhow.

“How does that make us any better than Jake Featherston?” Williamson asked.

“I’ll tell you how.” Cinci

Williamson grunted. “Well, you’re right about that.” He pulled out the pack of cigarettes again, looked at it, and shook his head. “Nah. This’ll keep. I want to grab some shuteye, is what I really want to do.”

“Yeah!” Cinci